Daniela Bayon writes on a remembrance wall Tuesday, across the street from the IV Deli Mart, where part of the mass killings took place in the Isla Vista area near Goleta. (Photo by Chris Carlson/Associated Press)

If every mass shooting in America is different in some ways from the others that plague us so often, the reaction from those with merely predictable, one-size-fits-all opinions tend to be the same.

But somehow, thankfully, since the tragic killing spree in Isla Vista over the weekend, we haven’t seen trotted out the opinion of those who think the answer to all such rampages is the arming of most everyone in society so there is always plenty of firepower around to take down the other shooter. Open carry in a college town where binge drinking is common and where alcohol-fueled riots are already a problem? That’s adding fuel to a fire that never would go out.

Certainly the latest murderous rampage carried out by a young man with mental problems and access to a lot of semi-automatic weapons and ammunition has similarities to other mass killings in recent years, very much including the 2012 shootings in Newtown, Conn. In that tragedy, a mentally troubled young man killed 20 first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the second-deadliest shooting incident in our nation’s history. In the Isla Vista killings, Elliot Rodger is accused of killing six people and then himself on Friday night. Though the diagnosis is unclear, Rodger is known to have been in some kind of treatment for his mental problems; his parents were worried enough recently to ask authorities for help that resulted in Santa Barbara sheriff’s deputies making a “welfare check” on him when he had been out of touch and posting scary comments on social media.

Rodger is also said to have been prescribed a psychoactive drug for his problems, and to have declined to take his medication.

In the wake of Newtown, there was the predictable flurry of attempts to pass legislation that might have addressed the problem. Because of the role that the mental illness of the shooter clearly played, laws were proposed requiring much more stringent background checks for a person buying, for instance, the three semiautomatic weapons that Rodgers purchased in recent months.

And 55 senators did actually vote for a law that would have created better mental health care resources for the potentially violent in the first place and made it easier for the deputies to intervene once there were suspicions that Rodger might be violent. As it was, though they were warned about the ominously misogynist postings on social media that Rodgers had made, since he appeared to be calm during the short time of their visit to his apartment, they weren’t able to do anything. As observers keep saying since Friday night’s horror on the streets of the campus town near UC Santa Barbara, being sad and consumed by self-pity is not a crime.

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There will be talk of new legislation again. One question that needs to be addressed: Should those who have been prescribed drugs to help with depression and other mental health issues be put on a list of people who must undergo a more stringent background check before buying firearms? Or at least a lot of firearms and 400 rounds of ammunition, as Rodgers had recently bought, which might just be seen as problem purchases for someone saying and doing the kinds of things Rodgers had been in recent months? It’s a reasonable question we hope is deeply explored in the upcoming debate.